The Internet provided a space for content creators to freely share their content to a wide range and number of audiences. The content itself is also increasing in variety, from the original vlogging channels and let’s play channels to well-constructed educational videos, music videos, mukbang, and even documentaries and quality journalism. During this booming period of YouTube, some content creators have stood out for their meme-making skills. This essay will dedicate most of its content on studying those content creators, their content, and their community, which can be represented by their YouTube comment sections under every video (provided that the creator enabled the function).
The research will be carried out by looking at several political meme videos by several content creators on YouTube, whose content will focus on one genre. The characteristic of the content will be studied with connections from contemporary society. Then, the comment section will be studied by observing the nature of the comments and how the creators’ viewers and community members interact. Because YouTube is constructed to be visible to the public for those who commented or posted a video without using the “private” option, I do not need to obtain consent from public commenters.
Case Studies
The genre of political memes we will be covering is, as I would like to call it, “covers”. It consists of videos that focus on using auto-tune and a substantial amount of video editing to make political figures sound like they are covering for a song, usually in the pop genre. It also consists of videos in which the content creator imitates political figures’ speech patterns and talk to people online anonymously and watch their reactions. The first video is called “Trump Sings Chug Jug With You (Number One Victory Royale)” [1] by content creator Maestro Ziikos. The content of the video is as the video title suggested: Former President Trump is being autotuned to sound like he is singing a song called “Chug Jug”, which is a song dedicated to an online shooter game, popular among young gamers, called “Fortnite”. The meme links the former President with gaming culture. The comment sections are filled with voices of support towards the video, evident by “Just the video I was looking for! Thank you, sir!” written by one user. However, more comments are related to further expanding the meme. Since the song Trump is “covering” is tightly linked to a popular game, more comments are “praising” how Trump is a good gamer, such as “Trump is not only a talented singer, but he’s a pro gamer too ✨” by one user and “I knew Trump had it in him to nuke Dusty Depot, but it will never beat Obama’s complete wipe of Tomato Town” by another user, with “Dusty Depot” and “Tomato Town” meaning two locations in the game but implicitly referencing two locations that the two former Presidents interfered with US military. There are a lot more videos similar to this format. In fact, Maestro Ziikos has created a list [2] containing all his creations of Trump covers, which is extremely impressive considering that it requires a huge amount of time and effort to create high-quality memes. Other videos [3] with similar format by different creators have the same comment structure: either support or expanding the narrative. However, if we expand the secondary comments, which are comments within comments but less accessible to the public because it requires a few more clicks from the mouse, we can see that the narrative can sometimes change from support and expanding the meme to some political debate on something that the original video does not intend to express at all. For example, under this video [4] by Maestro Ziikos and the comment “I’m a Democrat and even I can say that he’s a good singer” with (by the time of writing) 154 replies, the narrative gradually descends from making jokes about the video to a debate and criticisms on Democrats on China policy. Similar situations can be spotted for comments with a relatively large number of replies.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn676pJQ144
[2] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVwejjJC7KeDU8q0JeucFGGG8joY-pfqd
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AaN0L6b6to , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeO20wJgua8
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQ_M67xVI9M
Connections with Anthropology
This is somehow similar to Abu Lughod’s concept on family structure in Bedouin culture. Let’s start with social hierarchy. “Autonomy or freedom is the standard by which status is measured and social hierarchy determined” (Abu Lughod 79). It’s easy to spot that, apart from the YouTube Corporation itself which has the ultimate power to control and maintain everything within its jurisdiction, the content creators, with the freedom of posting anything they want onto the sight, unconsciously form the narrative of the comments. A slight deviation of details or nature of videos can change the direction of the comments, which signifies that content creators, with the most freedom on the site, hold the highest “virtual social status” on YouTube. The users in the comment section, on the other hand, have more restrictions because their comments are subjected to deletion by content creators if the comments contain information that the creators feel disturbed towards. This sounds like “the inequality of patriarch and dependents in the nuclear family” (80) described by Abu Lughod, with the patriarch representing content creators and dependents representing users in the comment section. However, the users in the comment section can demonstrate good virtues and monetary aid (such as donation to Patreon) to gain support from other users and acknowledgement from the content creators. Content creators usually offer them some perks to those special users such as some behind-the-scenes content and early access to some other information. This is an instance of users climbing up the social hierarchy. For the case of secondary comments, there are parallels of the structure of larger communities in Abu Lughod’s Veiled Sentiments. Because of larger communities are usually harder to maintain, it’s divided into smaller sub-communities. Content creators usually don’t dwell into secondary comments because it takes too much time, so secondary comments are oftentimes disjoint from the primary comments. Thus, it results in a new community structure, with those who are active in the secondary comment section being the hierarchy leader, forming their own narratives and directions of the conversation.
The sense of membership, described by Simpson, is also evident in the comment section. Most comments that are supported by others usually come with a sense of membership and community, and the concept of membership is fluid instead of rigid. One can leave a community when one considers the content creator doesn’t produce content one likes, and others can join a community if they find the content creator’s videos worthy of their subscriptions (Simpson 52). It doesn’t matter if the subscribers are connected through race, ethnicity, gender, or nationality; they all enjoy the same content produced by the creators within the community, and if they found themselves feeling not a part of the community, they can always go for another community. Those who disrupt the community will be discovered by members of the community and will be subjected to deletion of their comments.
Conclusion
The political meme community has a structured virtual society hierarchy resembling a nuclear, patron/client structure. Furthermore, the larger community will oftentimes divide into subcommunities that will deviate from the original direction of the content and produce its own comments. The concept of membership is a fluid entity that doesn’t rely on citizenship but a sense of belonging, which shapes a dynamic, lively community that changes every once in a while.
Works Cited
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1986. Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Maestro Ziikos. 2021. Trump Sings Chug Jug With You (Number One Victory Royale). Jul 13. Accessed Nov 18, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn676pJQ144.
Simpson, Audra. 2014. “A Brief History of Land, Meaning, and Membership in Iroquoia and Kahnawa:ke.” Chap. Two in Mohawk Interruptus, by Audro Simpson. Duke University Press. Accessed Nov 19, 2021.
Yun-Fan Wu 